Featured Artist Jonna Gill

Artist Jonna Gill creates highly expressive floral portraits as well as hand embellished abstractions. Enjoy her stunning portfolio and visit her website to learn more.

 

 

My love for art and artistic expression arose in my late teens. I remember locking myself away and spending hours, whole days, experimenting with different mediums—pastels, watercolors, inks, etc. Those days I filled acquainting myself with the feel and properties of all that I explored.

 

 

The art supply shop in my hometown was like a candy store to me. I’d ask myself, “What should I buy and indulge myself in to my heart’s desire today?” All things creative, then as now, have been the mainstay of my soul’s existence.

 

 

My professional studies have run the gamut in disciplines from metalsmithing to drawing, painting, photography and couture design.

 

 

Two disciplines, photography and painting, come together and remain separate in my most current and continuous projects—La Belle Fleur (one woman’s obsession with flowers) and PROJECT MAX.

 

 

With La Belle Fleur, I take photographic expression literally and capture the faces and personalities of some of the most divine creations on earth, the flowers. I was inspired to jump into this arena by artist/photographer extraordinaire Christopher Beane, whose works have taken the art of flower portraiture to a new level. And, of course, there is Irving Penn, whose use of the camera has become legendary and whose flower portraits are poignant and most exquisite.

 

 

In my flower portrait work, I have come to see the individual personalities that each flower possesses—sometimes I actually hear them speak to me. In a session involving my favorite Gerber Daisy, I actually heard her say, “Pick me up and squish me in your hand and then put me back down.” I did that and it became the photograph known as Medusa.

 

 

PROJECT MAX began as an “accident.”

 

 

I had been goaded by a friend to visit an ancient crystal skull whose owner takes it around the country for meetings and lectures. The skull’s name is Max. Legend has it that if you visit with Max, your life will change.

 

 

I went to see Max and came back the next day to set up a photo shoot involving jewelry. When I took the first shot, I realized I had inadvertently left the camera on the wrong settings from a prior shoot.

 

 

At first, I was alarmed by my mistake, then I took a second look and realized that the mistake had created an original capture which appeared surreal and quite unusual.

 

 

I continued experimenting by building small sets inclusive of objects I had in my studio (metals, gemstones, fabrics, etc.) while adding my own lighting recipes. This resulted in original captures which appeared almost fifth dimensional in nature.

 

 

PROJECT MAX original captures are produced as photographic prints and as mixed media prints on exquisite watercolor papers and canvas which I paint over to create hand embellished originals.

 

 

They also serve as inspiration for original works on canvas with acrylic paints or pastels on paper.

 

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